You keep your countenance for shame, All subjects like Dan Jackson's nose.* By reading those who teach it best ; For verse (I speak my judgment) yours. If he be guilty, you must mend him ? If he be innocent, defend him. * Which was afterward the subject of several poems by Dr. Swift and others. H. A LEFT A LEFT-HANDED LETTER TO DR. SHERIDAN,* 1718. DELANY reports it, and he has a shrewd tongue, That we both act the part of the clown and the cowdung; Welye cramming ourselves, and are ready to burst, Though Delany advis'd you to plague me no longer, You reply and rejoin like Hoadly of Bangor; Would, as he lay under, cry out Sirrah! yield. them, Went triumphant to church, and sang stoutly Te Deum. So the famous Tom Leigh, when quite run aground, Comes off by outlaughing the company round: * The humour of this poem is partly lost, by the impossibility of printing it left-handed as it was written. H. In In every vile pamphlet you'll read the same fancies, Having thus overthrown all our farther advances. My offers of peace you ill understood: Friend Sheridan, when will you know your own good? 'Twas to teach you in moderate language your duty; For, were you a dog, I could not be rude t'ye; The oftener you fall, the oftener you write; I beg your pardon for using my left hand, but I was in great haste, and the other hand was employ'd at the same time in writing some letters of business. I will send you the rest when I have leisure but pray come to dinner with the company you met here last. TO DR. SHERIDAN, 1718. WHATE'ER your predecessors taught us, And think your boys may gather there-hence But But as to comic Aristophanes, The rogue too vicious and too prophane is. I went in vain to look for Eupolis Down in the strand,* just where the New Pole is ; Proceed to tragics: first, Euripides So much, he swears the very best piece is, And that a woman, in these tragedies, Commonly speaking, but a sad jade is. At least, I'm well assur'd, that no folk lays The weight on him they do on Sophocles. } Whose moving touches, when they please kill us. And now I find my Muse but ill able, To hold out longer in trissyllable. I chose those rhymes out for their difficulty; *The fact may not be true; but the rhyme cost me some trouble. SWIFT. DR. DR. SHERIDAN TO DR. SWIFT. 1718. DEAR Dean, since in cruxes and puns you and I deal, Pray why is a woman a sieve and a riddle? In bed as I lay, Sir, a tossing and turning. sir? "Not I, by my troth, sir."-Then read it again, sir. The reason I send you these lines of rhymes double Is purely through pity, to save you the trouble Of thinking two hours for a rhyme as you did last, When your Pegasus canter'd in triple, and rid fast. As for my little nag, which I keep at Parnassus, With Phoebus's leave, to run with his asses, He goes slow and sure, and he never is jaded, While your fiery steed is whipp'd, spurr'd, bastinaded. THE |